Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering 1996 Annual Report [text version]

Whiting School of Engineering 1996 Annual Report

Electrical and Computer Engineering
Two Professors—Two Careers Filled With Achievements
Imaging and Ice
Touching Students With the Web
Department Facts

Two Professors--Two Careers Filled with Achievements
The department acknowledges two of its faculty for their significant accomplishments upon their retirements. “I became an engineer at a good time,” jokes Professor Emeritus Moise Goldstein. “A time when you didn’t have to worry about funding.” Goldstein received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1957 and came to Johns Hopkins in 1963 after rising to the rank of associate professor at his alma mater. “I needed to get out of the nest,” Goldstein comments, “and I think the University needed me.” He arrived at Hopkins as an associate professor of electrical engineering with a joint appointment in biomedical engineering. One of his first tasks was to guide the Ph.D. program in biomedical engineering, including chairing the program committee and directing the training grant.

As his career progressed, Goldstein focused his research on understanding how the cerebral cortex works in response to sound. His goal was to apply electronics and computer technology to devise communication aids for the deaf. Goldstein’s research resulted in the first wearable tactile aid, used a by two-year-old girl deaf from birth. “My interests are still with the deaf,” Goldstein remarks, “but my orientation has changed. I feel that sign language is better, in the long run, than cochlear implants for profoundly deaf children.”

Professor Emeritus Willis Gore is one of Hopkins’ own, having received his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University in 1948 and 1952, respectively. In his 44 years as a faculty member, Gore twice chaired the department, the first time from 1974 to 1980 and again from 1986 to 1987. His research in error-correcting codes resulted in several new classes of codes, as well as methods for decoding. In addition, Gore pioneered many electrical engineering courses at Hopkins. “I taught the first courses in information theory, computer engineering, and digital computing,” he recalls.

Gore received a distinguished teaching award and was a consultant for more than 15 companies and one government agency, including AAI, Martin Marietta, NASA, and Westinghouse.

Imaging and Ice
When Edo Waks was growing up, ice hockey and computers occupied most of his time. “I developed an interest in ice hockey while I was still living in Israel,” Waks says. His family came to the United States in 1981, and he has been an avid fan and player of the game ever since. Waks got his first computer at age ten, an event that would help chart his life’s course. “I think it’s good to get exposed to computing at a young age,” Waks says. “As I grew older, I didn’t know a lot about the different engineering disciplines, but I did know how to program.” His strong math skills and interest in computer science led him to engineering and to Johns Hopkins, where he majored in electrical and computer engineering.

As a participant in the department’s bachelor’s/master’s program, Waks worked with Associate Professor Jerry Prince on modeling heart motion. “One of the challenges has been to solve the general visualization problem and obtain a visual display of the heart’s left ventricle.” In their mathematical simulations, the team has duplicated heart motion as it would appear in magnetic resonance imaging and also in three dimensions. “Our model, which is based on a mechanical model, deforms the image by changing certain parameters over a period of time.” Waks presented a paper describing their research at the June conference of the IEEE Workshop on Mathematical Methods in Biomedical Image Analysis.

In 1995, Waks received the department’s William H. Huggins award, given for outstanding service and academic achievement. In addition to his academic and research efforts, Waks made room for time on the ice. “The team at Hopkins is an official school club,” he explains. “In season, the team practices twice at week at the Mt. Pleasant ice rink.” Waks recently received a three-year National Science Foundation fellowship and will pursue a doctorate in electrical engineering at Stanford University, with a bit of time reserved for ice hockey.

Touching Students With the Web
These days, it’s hard to watch TV, listen to the radio, or read newspapers and magazines without being bombarded by reports on the “Web.” Beginning with ARPAnet creator Robert Kahn, the ability to retrieve files remotely has existed for many years. However, a searcher had to be very precise in the request, needing to know where the information was stored, as well as the code commands to retrieve it. With the Web, now any one of us can retrieve documents and pictures from an infinite array of information—all with a mouse click.

From the start, Assistant Professor Pablo Iglesias saw the potential for Web use by the department. He created a set of Web pages, aimed at attracting prospective graduate students. From that point, the department’s Web use exploded, and Iglesias turned his attention to using the Web to enhance the curriculum.

In fall 1994, Iglesias informally surveyed students in his Control Systems course and found that they were well versed with the Web. He then created a home page for the course, one of the first of its kind in the Whiting School. “The page consisted of the course’s syllabus,” Iglesias explains, “with some added ‘goodies’ thrown in.” For example, students could retrieve past exams or solutions to homework problems. The material had been available to students previously in paper form, but the Web allowed students to obtain it from home. Now Iglesias is able to track frequency of use, and it is clear that students regularly visit the site. “It was extremely helpful having the course on the Web, and it made the course more interesting,” one student commented. “It saved paper, saved time, and was a reliable source of information,” another said.

Using the Web as a teaching tool is still in its infancy, Iglesias believes. “The material that students obtain from the home page is very useful, but I think it can be a much more didactic tool. For example, I envision a page where students can try drill problems, with pointers towards sources of help.”

Established 1919
Electrical engineering was one of the original departments when engineering began at Hopkins. The department, in its present form, was established in 1986.

Phone 410-516-7033

Email chair@ece.jhu.edu

WWW http://www.ece.jhu.edu/

Students
1995-96 Academic Year
Graduate: 57
Undergraduate: 121

Faculty and Researchers
Frederic M. Davidson, Chair
Andreas Andreou
Gert Cauwenberghs
Christopher T. Field
John I. Goutsias
Douglas M. Green
Brian L. Hughes
Pablo Iglesias
Frederick Jelinek
Richard I. Joseph
Alexander E. Kaplan
Jacob Khurgin
Gerard G. L. Meyer
Theodore Poehler
Jerry L. Prince
Wilson J. Rugh
Thordur Runolfsson
Xaoli Sun
Howard L. Weinert
Charles R. Westgate

Research Areas
Communications
Computer Engineering
Control Systems
Language and Speech Processing
Quantum Electronics
Signal and Image Processing
Solid State Electronics

Electrical and Computer Engineering Two Professors—Two Careers Filled With Achievements Imaging and Ice Touching Students With the Web Department Facts

Electrical and Computer Engineering
Two Professors—Two Careers Filled With Achievements
Imaging and Ice
Touching Students With the Web
Department Facts